Social Media Rubbish

By Joshua Bourne

[a blog post about digital recycling]

First: “What the heck is social media rubbish?”

Before we get onto answering that, first let’s address the dictionary definition of recycling – it is from here that I’ll tell my story.

Recycle [verb]: to treat or process (used or waste materials) so as to make suitable for reuse: recycling paper to save trees

From the over-packaged food in the supermarket to that extra office paper you never seem to use enough or need, there are many items out there that can be re-made and reused over and over again.

So if we recycle objects we don’t use, can the same can be said for unused space in social media?

To answer that question, I give you fairtweets.com

American ice cream maker, Ben & Jerry’s, launched fairtweets.com last month enable the recycling of all that blank wasted space on Twitter. Thanks to this website, you can tweet as you would normally from any Twitter client but the difference is any extra character space (of the 140 Twitter allows) left over at the end, gets picked up by Ben & Jerry’s and used to create a message about Fair Trade.

A great idea.

Taking this a step further, think about how much other extra space isn’t used throughout social media. Sure, there is extra tweet space, but what about the unused space on Facebook updates, or YouTube videos? Take X amount of the 420 characters you don’t use on Facebook, or X amount of minutes of the 10 minutes you are allowed on YouTube and donate your extra space to formulate a message or video about a charity of your choice.

As a CSR initiative, brand owners could now have an easy way to raise awareness around the charity of their choice and – in fact – there’s no reason why this couldn’t be hosted on their owned social presences – Want to visit Sony on Twitter? Cool, why not donate your social real estate to a good cause while you’re there?

It’s important to remember here that like recycled items made from non-usable materials, the extra space on social media sites that is non-usable certainly can be used by someone or something and for a good cause.

Kind of gives a new spin on ‘social CSR’, don’t you think?

Like this?

Brought into the world on Thursday, June 16th, 2011 and filed under 1000thoughts.

  • http://twitter.com/HSirhan Hamid Sirhan

    I like the Fairtweets concept but it’s not really something you can call recycling. It’s using space that would have otherwise been wasted.